Many peripherals to computer networks include a scanner component. One example of such a peripheral is an “All-in-one”, also known as a multifunction peripheral (MFP) in that it has the capability to perform the multiple functions of scanning hardcopy documents, copying, and printing. Another example is a digital network copier that scans in documents from an automatic document feeder, does high volume copying, and has the capabilities of binding, collating, folding, stacking, stapling, stitching, edge-trimming, paginating, and printing on substrates of varied composition. Each of these peripherals, when in communication with an interconnecting network, can also be described as being a transmitter device. A transmitter device is an appliance that has an input device (e.g. a keyboard), a display, and a scanner. The transmitter device need not have a printer. A digital camera is a type of transmitter device, but in comparison to the foregoing, it is not as useful for handling documents and typically lacks the resolution and ability to rapidly and repetitively transfer information after scanning to a repository.
In an exemplary digital transmitting operation, a hardcopy of a document or other physical object can be presented to the scanner portion of a transmitter device. After scanning, the transmitter device transforms the scanned image into a digital representation that is then saved in a first data format. A process might then be activated to convert the data in the first format into a second format. By way of example, the data in the first format can be a bit map, a graphical image file format (*.GIF) file, or a tagged image file format (*.TIF) file, and the data in the second format can be a Portable Document Format (*.PDF) file. The conversion from the first to the second data formats can cause a transmitter device to experience an operational failure. If an operational failure does not occur, message data can be electronically transmitted. The message data contains a digital representation of the scanned document in one of the data formats. The message data is addressed to a recipient address on an interconnecting network. The recipient address can be an electronic mail (email) address at an email server, a destination web site, a local file folder at a document server, a facsimile server, or another similar location. The transmitter device can attach the digitized representation of the scanned pages to the message data. The message data and its attachment can be sent to one or more addresses for one or more recipients over the interconnecting network. Each recipient can have an address that a user manually enters at the transmitter device or that a user specifies using a predefined defined list of recipient addresses that can be stored in a memory of the transmitter device.
A transmitter device will typically generate a log file that contains an entry for each transmission of message data that is to be sent from the transmitter device. For each transmission that is to be sent, the entry in the log file can include the address of who the transmission is to be sent to, the time and date of when the transmission was sent, and the size of the transmission to be sent. If a first attempt at sending a transmission from the transmitter device fails, the transmission process is stopped and the log file can be printed. When the transmitter device is powered down or loses power, the log file and the information therein can be lost. It would be beneficial to utilize the information in the transmission log file of a transmitter device. Consequently, there is a need for improved methods, programs, transmitter devices, and systems that can provide such a capability.